Journey to the Summer Palace

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On Friday, I took a brief-ish tour of the Summer Palace. I’ve uploaded the pictures above. The Summer Palace served as a kind of royal retreat for the emperor, when he wanted to flee Beijing’s summer heat. It consists of a man-made lake surrounded by a series of trails and walkways with a building complex on the north side of the lake. The Summer Palace had a massive renovation at the very end of the Qing Dynasty (1890’s), when the empress dowager Cixi, diverted funds from the navy to build up and expand the building complex. It was quite pretty, and the weather was also very cooperative.

Some of the pictures are kind of neat, too. In a few of them, you can actually see the reflection of the clouds on the surface of the lake. We only had about 2 1/2 hours to tour the area, as the ferry that brought us in was a little slow-going. So, I didn’t get to everything. But it was quite nice.